While it happened over a year ago, we finally have an idea as to why WWE unified titles for Roman Reigns. Plus, Tony Khan rips an ESPN reporter.
Why WWE Unified Titles
If you wondered why WWE unified titles last WrestleMania, we might finally have answers.
And yes, when we say why WWE unified titles at ‘Mania, we are talking about the WWE and Universal Championships.
The tag titles were unified a bit later…and with the draft and brand split happening again…we wonder about those.
But, for now, why did WWE unify the world titles? After all, it painted them into a corner, one which led to the unveiling of a new title recently.
Well…this might surprise you, but title unification was not always the plan, according to Fightful.
Back in early 2022, Roman Reigns was slated to battle Brock Lesnar at the now-retired Day One PPV.
That match, of course, would have been for Roman’s Universal Championship.
Except, Reigns came down with COVID and had to pull out of the title defense.
Rather than give Brock Lesnar a night off, WWE Creative had a bright idea.
Per Fightful, it was at that time that folks in WWE decided to insert Lesnar into what had been a Fatal Four Way for Big E’s WWE Championship.
Beyond adding Lesnar to the match, the idea was then to have Lesnar and Reigns collide at WrestleMania, allowing for unified titles.
Lesnar became WWE Champion again at Day One, and the rest, as they say, is history.
On one hand, the general lack of long term planning going into the decision is a bit…not shocking?
I mean, Lesnar versus Reigns was a big deal even with “only” a single world title.
Yes, having Reigns unify the titles added more prestige to his historic run…but as we all know…it also wasn’t ideal for creative.
Only having one world champion, across both brands, when that person was working a limited part-time schedule? Not good.
Now we have titles for each brand, but finding out why WWE unified the titles-or, how they came to that decision-makes me cringe.
As long as we don’t get even more WWE Unified titles…
Tony Khan Rips Reporter
In other news, Tony Khan rips an ESPN reporter, accusing him of doing dirty work for WWE.
As is often the case in our world nowadays, the drama unfolded on Twitter.
You can peep the exchange here:
Now, to explain things a bit here…
Coppinger is an ESPN reporter, and he covers pro wrestling, predominantly WWE, for the “worldwide leader”.
Still crazy to think ESPN covers WWE.
But, Tony Khan’s dig at Coppinger’s “agent” Nick Khan?
Well, there could be some legitimacy to it, hence the dig.
Nick Khan, prior to landing his cushy WWE role? He was a high profile agent for CAA.
And Mike Coppinger? He was represented by…CAA.
I have not yet found out if Nick Khan represented Mike Coppinger, but there was an overlap.
If there was a history between the two, it would call into question Coppinger’s impartiality…so Tony Khan does have a possible point.
The underlying point isn’t the drama, or an ESPN reporter allegedly doing WWE’s dirty work on behalf of his former agent.
For me, it is actually more about the seating configuration, and it’s worth watching.
AEW and Khan have been pretty excited about All In at Wembley, and understandably so.
Early interest looks to have somewhere near 36,000 tickets spoken for.
If Coppinger’s assessment is true, that means AEW will have nearly sold out it’s seats for Wembley.
But, comparing that to the number of seats sold for the big boxing match, and it’s less than half.
Khan being testy could mean AEW can sell more than 40,000 seats. Or it could mean that they are only set up to fill about half of the stadium.
All that said, this isn’t really a war of words anyone from WWE should want to engage in. Many fans can remember WWE running shows with large portions of seating blocked off.
